Tyranid attack
by katana44
Summary: Captain Nilmane and his squad attempt to hold off a tyranid army until the planet is evacuated and imperial bombers can destroy the aliens. Warhammer 40k short story. Rated T for violence and description.
1. Incoming

**A/N: This is just a build-up chapter. The fighting and action starts next chapter.****  
Disclaimer: I don't own Warhammer 40,000. I do own Nilmane and Becker, however. Onward...**

* * *

Captain Nilmane stared at the first wave of incoming tyranids. They were in firing range of their few remaining artillery cannons and his squad would be able to fire on the aliens in less than ten minutes, such was the speed of the invaders' advance. However, Nilmane knew that they would be lucky if they managed to fight off the first wave, let alone the entire battle force of tyranids. His squad's job was to hold them off for as long as possible, while the city was evacuated and the bombers arrived in an hour's time. The bombers would easily annihilate the enemy, but Nilmane suspected he would not live to see them fall. At least he would perish knowing he had fought his hardest for the emperor.

The start of the wave would at least be fightable. If he and his men chose a correct strategy, they could take out the smaller tyranids- the hormagaunts and termagaunts- before they needed to face the larger mutants- the tyranid warriors and carnifex. At the moment, the artillery was trying to weaken the stronger aliens so that they posed less of a threat when they attacked. Nilmane had considered wiping out the smaller ones instead, but decided if they could be killed with a lasgun, why waste artillery shots on them?

He looked away from the horde of attackers. He knew the walls of this old fortress would not fall, but the aliens would easily scale them. The main door would withstand attacks until two carnifex slammed into it. The Scarred Eagles chapter of space marines (who were defending the city from the opposite side) had permitted the squad to requisition a dreadnought to help them defend this position. It would help, particularly against the warriors and carnifex, but even with a dreadnought, the squad would only hold for so long. The exhausted faces of his men told it all.

Covered in dirt and grime, his soldiers looked as though they had journeyed to hell. They had. If there is any hell in this life, it is definitely a tyranid attack. The ashen wastelands ahead of the fortress were coated in Xenos scum. Nilmane felt fear, anger and hate all of a sudden. How dare this filth kill innocent life forms who served the emperor. How dare the emperor not help his men who stood and fought the beasts and died doing so! Why should they dedicate their lives to a man who had done nothing for decades but sit on a throne in life support!?

Nilmane calmed himself down. He was thinking heretic thoughts. That would only lead him down the path of chaos. A path no one wanted to choose.

He pulled himself out of his thoughts. Back to space, time, reality. He stood up on the battlements of the old fortress and spoke to his men.

"I know you are all scared." He called to them. "I am too. We are all tired, weary, exhausted and scared. If you want to retreat to the city, it is probably too late. The tyranids will be on us in less than five minutes. Our aim is to defend this location while the city is evacuated. I will not lie to you. It is almost certain we will all be killed. You may want to give up. You may want to panic. But let me tell you this. You have the option to die fighting. Embrace that option, for it is the only one where you will die having done something notable and honourable. You have three minutes to make up your mind."

Nilmane turned back around to face the aliens, loading his lasgun. He knew at least one other soldier would join him. His second in command, Lieutenant Becker. They had known each other since they had entered the imperial guard training academy together, back when they were fifteen. They had fought orcs, chaos and tyranids together. If Becker refused to join him fighting up here, then he was dead to Nilmane. Their friendship had never existed if that was the case.

To his surprise, all forty of his remaining men had picked up their rifles and joined him on the castle walls. Nilmane wondered why he had been surprised. After all, his men were loyal to the emperor and always obeyed their captain. Becker stood by Nilmane's side. "One week's wages says I kill more than you," he whispered jokingly into his ear. Nilmane forbid gambling amongst his troops, but with death imminent, he decided to forgive this now.

"You're on, my friend." He said back to his mate. "If any of you want to make bets," he called to his troops. "Now is the time, because you're only getting this one chance."

Some soldiers laughed weakly. They were bracing themselves for death and their captain was on about bets. He'd finally lost it, they thought. Every man had his weapon loaded and faced the incoming horde. On captain Nilmane's order, every one of them opened fire.


	2. Hormagaunts and Termagaunts

Bolts of laser fire flew through the air towards the incoming tyranid mass. All of the guardsmen fired one shot at one enemy before moving on. Nilmane looked back to see he had hit one of the gaunts in the ribs. Or at least they looked like ribs. He didn't check if it was a hormagaunt or termagaunt. There wasn't enough time.

The crowd of alien monsters still kept throwing themselves towards the battlements. They all moved in the same direction, at the same speed, as if the beasts were actually one creäture and not thousands. In a way, this was true, as they were all under the control of the army's hive mind. The hive mind was the brain of every tyranid, from the hormagaunts to the hive tyrants. The only difference was the larger monsters had more choice over how they performed tasks the hive mind gave them.

Nilmane fired bolt after bolt into the smaller creatures. Each shot took down one more tyranid but when one fell, three more seemed to replace it. The first row of hormagaunts had reached the castle walls and was now scaling them with their scythe-like arms.

"Shoot them off! Shoot the off!" Nilmane cried, aiming down and knocking the raptor like aliens off the fortress walls. Within a few seconds of this however, he felt a streak of heat fly past his head. He knew this meant only one thing. The termagaunts were in range.

Termagaunts and hormagaunts make up the bulk of tyranid forces. The former are the ranged foot soldiers, while the latter are mêlée. A single 'gaunt is no trouble for a soldier to handle at far range. However, they come en masse, hurtling themselves at their opponents until they are in attacking range. Once hormagaunts are able to attack you, you will not walk away unscathed. Termagaunts seemed to just keep you unable to thin out the horde, so their allies could move in without resistance.

"Get down! Enemy fire incoming!" Nilmane yelled. He ducked down behind the battlements and stuck his rifle over them, pointing it down towards the climbing hormagaunts. This minimized the amount of his body the tyranids could hit, therefore reducing the odds of being shot. He saw Becker crouching down and pulling a grenade off his belt. He pulled off the clip and threw it over the cover. Nilmane decided now was the best time to use them, and shouted an order.

"Men! Grenades!" He pulled his grenade from his belt and copied what his friend had done before tossing it overhead. As his men began to carry out their order, there was the small sound of an explosion, barely audible over the shrieks of the creatures, which meant Becker's grenade had gone off. Nilmane stood up and fired into the termagaunts. He didn't care that they may hit him. Many of the hormagaunts had been knocked off the wall by his squad's shooting and the termagaunts were the main opponents now. Nilmane noticed, through both sound and sight, that the grenades were doing their job-he could hear the explosions and shrieks of injured tyranids. He saw their corpses, half of which had been blown apart by the blasts. Alien blood, bones and guts were rapidly littering the battlefield. Nilmane kept firing at the tyranids. These beings were not sentient. They were animals, created by a twisted, psychotic overlord bent on eradicating all life but theirs from the galaxy. Monster after monster fell, with even more taking their place.

Nilmane looked to his left when he heard one of his soldier's screams. The man had been unfortunate to receive a direct hit from a termagaunt's gun. Tyranids used (quite literally) live ammunition. Their "bullets" were actually creatures that ate away at whatever surface they land on, be it metal, wood, or flesh. Nilmane could do nothing to help the man as the animal ate away at his muscle. He could only watch as he attempted to grab at the thing, trying to rip it off his body. The thing's body burned through his skin and bones. After what felt like years, it must have hit a vital organ, because the man stopped screaming and slumped to the ground. Nilmane could only spare a second's thought for the soldier. He had died fighting for the emperor and for that, he would be rewarded in the afterlife.

The rest of the squad kept shooting, in desperate hope that they could eventually force the alien animals back. Luckily, this was only a small force of the monsters-had it been one of the major hive fleets, such as behemoth or leviathan, they would have been annihilated in seconds. The squad threw their second round of grenades into the swarm. This time, the effect was even more visible. What had earlier been row upon row of termagaunts shooting at them, taking down another man every few seconds, had dissolved into dead and mortally wounded things. Those that were still alive writhed and screamed an unearthly scream of pain. Still, Nilmane, Becker and the survivors kept firing.

After about fifteen minutes of fighting off the smaller game, Nilmane knew that the big monsters would soon arrive. "How many men left?" He called out.

"Twenty three!" was the reply from one of his men. It was a heavy loss, but not the worst ever.

"There'll be carnifex soon, sir!" Someone yelled out. "We won't be able to fight them off!"

"Well then," Nilmane almost smiled slightly insanely. "I think it's time we put our gift from the Scarred Eagles to use."

* * *

"I am the emperor's will, made manifest." Boomed the dreadnought. Equipped with a plasma bolter the size of a human on one arm and a crushing fist with a flamethrower beneath it on the other, this creation of the space marines was truly one of wars most powerful weapons. It was twenty feet tall and almost that wide. The bulk of such a machine meant it a good choice to combat the larger tyranids. Twelve men defended the battlements while nine prepared to take out the 'gaunts that would enter when the gate opened. The remaining two were opening the gate.

"Open fire!" yelled Nilmane, shooting at the scythes and faces of the monsters as they entered the opening fortress. The dreadnought activated its plasma bolter, incinerating all the creatures in its path. The cries of tyranids filled the air-some were death screams, others war shouts. The dreadnought made quick work of any of the lesser aliens in his path, incinerating them with his bolter and flamethrower, or crushing them with his fist.

"Die, die die!" the machine's voice boomed, frying a group of the creatures. It looked as though the tide was slowly turning. Then the smaller tyranids began to retreat back, ordered by the hive mind to do so. This could mean only one thing. Nilmane managed to choke out some words before the screech of the beasts defeaned his troops: "The carnifex. They're here."

* * *

**A/N: I'm not really sure what the fist like thing dreadnoughts have is so I just called it that. Sorry if that was the wrong name. Also, I don't know for certain the plural of carnifex. Carnifexes just sounds a bit silly to me, so I've made it like sheep- the plural is the same as the singular. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyways, thanks for reading!**


	3. Carnifex

There were two carnifex in the first wave of tyranids. Both were about two feet taller than the Scarred Eagles' dreadnought and a foot or so less wide. Both also were armed with biological cannons of a sort, similar to a termagaunt's gun, but much more powerful and larger. One had pincers the size of a man and could probably crush a chimera tank with them. The other was equipped with giant scythe-like arms, not dissimilar to a hormagaunt's but on a larger scale. The scythe carnifex was armed with tusks to protect its face, whereas the other had no weapons on its head area. They were a light azure colour which, from an angle, made them look slightly ghostly. That or it may have been Nilmane's exhaustion.

As the imperium had quickly discovered, carnifex were the organic equivalent of tanks, at the very least. They were immune to gunfire from anything less than a leman Russ artillery shot from close range. The fortress' artillery had done little to phase these carnifex-they seemed completely uninjured. The dreadnought charged at what Nilmane had subconsciously in his mind labelled scythe monster. The other carnifex (Nilmane noted him down as chaos creature) turned and fired his cannon point blank into a group of three from his squad.

The effect was devastating. The men were sent hurtling into the wall, screaming in unearthly pain as the mass that was ammunition for the monster's weapon digested their bodies. The men were dead in moments. The witnesses to this attack reacted in two ways-some went mad, screaming, shooting or just running, the others stood there in shock and horror. Claw creature took advantage of this and reached down to one of the remaining guardsmen. It crushed his skull like it was little more than a coffee bean.

Nilmane pulled himself back to earth after what felt like days of staring at the gruesome scene that had just occurred in front of him. The hormagaunts were now swarming through the open gate. He began shooting, at first selecting his targets but soon firing randomly into the horde. His men began firing too. It wasn't enough. The creatures kept on coming. If there is an Armageddon, Nilmane thought, this is it.

Monster after monster fell, but with each kill, ten more took its place. Nilmane looked up to the battlements where the men were firing into the mass below. A few hormagaunts must have still been climbing the walls, because one guardsman was pulled backwards over the defences to his death. Others were jumped on from behind, quickly ripped into shreds of flesh, blood and bone. Their agonized screams rang in Nilmane's ears.

He looked back to the dreadnought, all the while still firing. It had engaged chaos creature, grabbing its cannon with its fist, sending a burst of fire upwards from the arm's flamethrower. The machine then began to try and wrench off the gun. The bio-weapon split in two, with a cracking noise similar to that of a bone breaking. What could only be alien blood and ammunition flew out of both ends. The carnifex screamed again-the same unearthly scream as before, but this time it was of pain and not a battle cry.

The cry spurred on Nilmane's morale. The survivors of his group too, seemed less desperate, knowing they could injure the largest of the monsters. Then scythe monster assisted his battle-brother. It screamed another war shout, catching the attention of the dreadnought. The mechanical giant turned around to see another bolt of tyranid filth heading for it. Instantly, it activated its plasma bolter, incinerating the shot.

Then was the moment Nilmane knew these monsters had minds. Clever ones at that. Chaos creature took advantage of the dreadnought's distraction to grab both of its arms. It then crushed each arm with its gigantic pincers. It hit the bolter fuel and flamethrower charger quickly, each resulting in an explosion about a third the dreadnought's size. All that remained was wires and bent metal. The dreadnought was now nothing more than a moving target. Its weapons were defunct.

With chaos creature still gripping it, scythe monster moved in for the kill. Nilmane remembered what carnifex meant- executioner. That word was more apt now than ever before. The beast drew back his weapons and prepared to destroy the machine. In one fluid motion, the leviathan had slashed straight through the dreadnought's centre, slicing it into two. The top part fell to the ground, the words, "it is better to die for the emperor than live for yourself" being its last.

Nilmane looked on in shock. Their one real hope had been defeated. There was no chance of living now. There never was. The hormagaunts had reached him now but he didn't care. Instinctively, he stabbed one in the ribs with his bayonet, but then lost his rifle as they swarmed him. All he could hear was the screaming of the monsters and the yells of his men. They would all be turned into tyranids themselves, their gene-seed used to generate the alien armies. Unless the bombers arrived before the city was taken. Forgive me emperor, he thought as the tyranids tore into his flesh. I have failed.


End file.
